Earth To Bella, Part One
by hoh-hey
Summary: It's a quiet emergency. Mortimer takes a look into how his life intertwined with hers. A tragedy in two acts.


Y'see, I'm new to this whole writing game...

;)

Don't own won't own. Show some love to my review buttons.

* * *

The first time he meets Bella Bachelor she is wearing her little red jumper and is flying off the top of the slide clutching a lizard.

"Here, here, here," she says, thrusting it in his hands, "look, look, it's a iguana!"

"Go away," he angrily says, shooing her. After all, he is reading about The Adventures of Raymundo and that's much more interesting than some stinky lizard off the ground.

She huffs and stares, the hand holding the hapless lizard against her hip. This is no way that a boy is supposed to act. Her brother Michael is always scuffing his jeans and shoes and talking about trying to find unicorns and chipmunks and other boy things. This boy is different and weird, and she likes it. Bella squints at him and he sticks out his tongue and then buries his face behind the book, blushing.

"Come along, Mortimer," Cornelia Goth calls softly, and hastily he gets to his feet and runs away from this new girl, not sure what to make of her.

* * *

The second time he meets Bella Bachelor his mother has arranged the whole thing. He thinks that's not entirely right, though, as he straightens his bow tie in the image of the mirror. It's his father who is old-fashioned, even though he doesn't portray it, and it's his mother whom looks to the future. Maybe one day he'll be like her, wearing her purple-corset dress, holding a glass of wine, and looking out over the garden of tombstones in the backyard.

"Mother?"

She turns to Mortimer, glass in hand and smiles. He notices how worn she is. Her purple hair used to be so vibrant but now it is not.

"Yes, Mortimer?" She unconsciously straightens his already perfectly straight tie.

"Does Father really want me to go out with her? I barely know her. We aren't even in the same clubs after school."

His voice, normally so smooth, is plaintive. He is scared.

Cornelia sighs and it is all she can do to keep from stopping him. "You will have a good time, my love."

She kisses the top of his forehead and he pretends he doesn't notice her wipe away a tear as she puts her wine glass down on a nearby table. "Come, this is a happy night! You are going to be the finest gentleman at the ball."

"It's not a _ball,_ Mom—" But there comes an impatient honk from the driveway and Gunther Goth is there by the limousine, motioning for Mortimer to come along and meet his destiny, although, really, who arranges marriages anymore? Dates are all the rage this day.

But then the door opens and Bella Bachelor is there, and she is wearing a short pink dress that highlights the pink flower in her hair and long white gloves and she isn't the girl on the playground anymore she is a woman, a woman whom his father wants him to marry(that can't be right)and he can't do anything but try to ignore the sick feeling in his stomach.

Bella Bachelor is named Prom Queen because everyone knows her and she is popular, and suddenly nerdy Mortimer is also everyone's friend and they are high-fiving him in the gym and stealing away sips of Juice from a flask(was it from Michael Bachelor?)and then rowdily crashing in a circle on the dance floor. Everyone is here and Bella Bachelor is in the middle of it all, arms raised, laughing like a loon, twirling, twirling, and in that moment Mortimer Goth realizes that she is not the girl on the playground nor the girl in his classroom but the girl in his dreams that is too far away to touch.

He drops his Juice cup on the ground in the courtyard and finds his way into Central Park right across the street from the school. He drops the ground by the fountain in the middle and just stares at the stars.

* * *

The third time he meets Bella Bachelor she is at Sims U working towards a major in Fine Arts and she shoves a protest flyer in his hands.

"Mortimer! Wow! I haven't seen you since…"

_Since Prom Night. _

She lets the sentence fall from her lips, but smiles eagerly to replace it. He notices that the flower is gone from her flowing black locks and instead there are many beads because she has gotten so far up in the Rebel social group that she is 'bohemian' and she wants to change the world.

"Anyway, will you come to my protest? It's about the scarcity of world resources…we need to be more careful about our earth and make sure that everyone has enough to go around, y'know." She brushes her beaded dreadlocks out of her face and looks at him, hopeful.

"Can you make it?"

He is torn. He wants to go home and study from his books in the library but he is curious. Bella Bachelor is becoming a new person and he wants to know everything about her all over again.

"Yeah, I'll be there, um, where is it?"

Her face lights up and she smiles so broad it's like she's never smiled before.

"Mortimer, great! You won't regret it. It'll be on the quad at two! See ya then!"

She winks and moves on down the sidewalk as a class has just broken from the business school and Bella is throwing flyers at the well-dressed two-termers trying to help her cause. Mortimer stands for a long moment and crumples the flyer in his hands. He makes up his mind to go, and indeed, finds himself standing awkwardly on the edge of the quad looking down on the sunken conversation pits and chess tables where Bella Bachelor and Shea Hollis and Asala Karam are all standing behind a podium and waving signs with a crudely drawn rock and chisel on the and Bella has never seemed to have more passion. He is stunned and he can't do anything but stare. And at the end when the crowd has swelled to most of the student body and the professors are shouting on soapboxes and the administration building across the way has curious heads poked out each window she looks him right in the eye and puts her fist in the air and smiles triumphantly.

He knows then he has to ask her on a date and he pushes through the crowd and she is smiling as he picks up one of the picket signs and tosses it into the air as people are going crazy and yelling and screaming that they've won, a victorious protest and she leans down and grabs his hand to pull him up beside her on the podium—

-Mortimer grabs Bella in a heated kiss of that moment and she pushes him away, disgusted and hurt flashing in her brown eyes and then she disappears, lost in the throng of revelers and Mortimer can do nothing but stand clutching the sign.

* * *

The fourth time he meets Bella Bachelor they bump awkwardly into each other in line at Hogan's Deep-Fried Diner.

"Bella?"

She turns, startled to hear her name. She is much older now(how many days have passed since the protest and graduation?)but to him she doesn't look a day past prom. Her hair is loose again and she is wearing a deep, deep red dress and shoes that match for once.

"Oh…Mortimer," her tone is cool and she is not pleased to see him, "how are you doing? I heard about your mother's passing…my condolences."

"Th-thanks," he replies automatically. He can't stop his tongue from sticking to his throat.

The line moves ahead and he thinks to himself that she is too formal for take-out at the diner. He is one the verge of asking but he shouldn't-couldn't-won't and she instead moves forward again, focusing on the menu pasted above the sandwich counter. A voice calls out to her from a booth—oh, it's Christopher Steel and the rest of his pack—and she waves back at them with an easy smile. Mortimer is jealous of the Werewolves; everyone loves Bella and no one barely notices him anymore. He's content to spend days in the tower of 13 Skyborough Blvd where he fiddles with the large cabinet he half-heartedly wants to build a time machine out of and the army of half-assembled SimBots that blink and shuffle on one leg or the other until he perfected his prototype.

Oh well, they probably would once he invented the auto-recycling newspaper.

"Bella I—"

"Look, Mortimer," she interrupts, "you're a nice guy. But I'm seeing Jared Frio now. I think it's time you moved on." She pats his arm comfortably like one would a dog.

He barely has time to say anything but splutter nonsensically—Jared Frio? The _Vampire womanizer with a kid _Jared Frio? What could she possibly see in him?

She breezes past him with takeout with barely a glance backwards and leaves Mortimer alone in the middle of the busy shop and happy customers. Christopher Steel laughs loudly and he glances up in paranoia that they're talking about him and suddenly he is no longer hungry. He leaves the goopy carbonara sitting on the edge of the counter and goes home and instead looks through the telescope, searching the galaxy.

* * *

The last time he meets Bella Bachelor she is pale and drifts through his house aimlessly. She has died on another lot, but he couldn't bear that her tombstone rested in the cemetery instead of in the plot by his mother where she belonged.

It was a terrible accident that Pleasantview talked about for days. Jared's ex-girlfriend Claire Ursine had been visiting and as they relaxed in the pool a meteor smashed into the house, killing Bella and Claire instantly. Jared escaped and disappeared—they had no children together—and hadn't been seen since. Mortimer had gone and taken her gravestone himself—of course he knew how all of that worked; moving the grave moved the ghost—and Bella Bachelor was brought to him, smoky orange halo and all.

"Mortimer," she calls to him from the back porch where her urn sits on a little table surrounded by flowers, "Mortimer, you have to move on. You have to let me go."

But he can't. She was everything and nothing to him and he doesn't respond except to disappear into the tower and tinker with the time machine and his robots.

One day, he vows, he will step into the booth and see where it takes him.


End file.
